Jersey City's Terry Dehere featured in Star-Ledger

Star-Ledger photoTerry Dehere, former Seton Hall men's basketball star and aspiring/struggling Jersey City mover and shaker, stands next to a painting of Miles Davis in his Jersey City office.

Let's say you're not at the supermarket stocking up on canned fruit and water.

And you're not at the hardware store buying salt and a shovel in preparation for the big blizzard.

Then you might be in a position to check out today's Star-Ledger and its "I am New Jersey" feature on Jersey City's own Terry Dehere.

Dehere, 39, the former NBA journeyman and St. Anthony High and Seton Hall stand-out, opens up about politics, his parents, his defeat at the polls in his re-election bid as a school board member, his work as a developer of affordable housing, and much more.

Perhaps the most curious part of the story is the Star-Ledger's Dave D'Alessandro's interview with Ward F Councilwoman Viola Richardson about Dehere.

"Terry is a young man who was a professional ballplayer who dedicated a park in his name," a very guarded Richardson is quoted as saying. "He also considers himself a developer, I guess."

A very strange quote given the fact that Richardson was with Dehere at his latest development, 90 Virginia Ave., two hours after she did the interview with the Ledger.

What's going on here legendary St. Anthony b-ball coach Bob Hurley?

"People around here throw compliments around like they're sewer plates," Coach Hurley is quoted as saying. "That's always been the political climate. Terry is perceived as a young guy wo will be a threat down the road."

Terry is also close to Lavern Webb-Washington who ran against Richardson in last year's municipal election. Webb-Washington also pleaded guilty to accepting $15,000 in bribes from a government informant as part of the massive Operation Bid Rig sting. In March, she was sentenced to a year and a day.

Jersey City, taken over by the state in 1989, won back the right in 2007 to have an elected school board that has legal powers to approve its own budgets and hire its own superintendent. But it can't hire or fire administrators or teachers, make any major repairs or changes to its schools or even write its own curriculum.